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NuBattlestar Galactica Appreciation Thread

acappellasaurus

acappellasaurus

Fleet Captain
Fleet Captain
Okay...okay. Maybe I've had some ambrosia (fine, bourbon), but I am on the cusp of completing a rewatch of the '03-'09 Battlestar Galactica, and damned if it doesn't really hold up well after all this time, and the rewatch is so worth it. Thoughts on this show? Am I crazy or does it rank as one of the best post-Y2K shows to this day?

Sidebar: Out of complete nowhere, whilst going through customs on a recent vacation, I was stunned to be in the queue next to Jamie Bamber. He was gracious to a fault and I am so thrilled to have met him IRL.
 
Has anyone ever made a supercut of the attack on the colonies by combining the BSG scenes with the Razor scenes?
 
I was never a fan of nuBSG but I am seriously liking the idea that every iteration of BSG that has ever existed, or ever WILL exist, takes place in a single universe.

"All of this has happened before, all of this will happen again".

That being said, I do have a question: "Revelations" was almost the SERIES FINALE, wasn't it? I seem to remember something to that effect. And it would fit the dark, depressing ethos of the series, wouldn't it? All they went through to find Earth, and it's a radioactive wasteland? And that's the END? :lol:

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I'm a first time watcher myself (spoiler-tagging would consequently be appreciated but I realize we're talking about an old series here and all). Just got to S3.

I would really, really like to punch Baltar in the face.

Other than that it's been a heck of a ride. I'm having trouble finding characters who I genuinely consider likeable, but they're all very...human.

Especially the Cylons. ;)
 
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He's such a loathsome cockroach.

And horribly enough his willingness to engage in awful acts because he has the hots for a toaster (in this particular instance) reminds me of people I've known.

Please don't answer this question, but I do wonder whether it will ever be explained what's going on with his visions of Six. I also saw "Downloads", so I know there's more to it than we believe for most of the series to that point.
 
I think my main problem with nuBSG was that these people were simply too much like US. I mean, it's an alien civilization, but they still have names like William, Lee, Sharon, Billy, etc.? And their civilization is a carbon copy of our own? At least the original series tried to make things sound a LITTLE bit otherworldly.

And don't even get me started on "All Along the Watchtower". :scream:

As for Head Six, Head Baltar, etc....I always thought those were nuBSG's version of the Ship of Lights. And the "Cylon God" (doesn't like to be called that ;) ) was nuBSG's version of Count Iblis.
 
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Mr. Laser Beam said:
I think my main problem with nuBSG was that these people were simply too much like US. I mean, it's an alien civilization, but they still have names like William, Lee, Sharon, Billy, etc.? And their civilization is a carbon copy of our own? At least the original series tried to make things sound a LITTLE bit otherworldly.

And don't even get me started on "All Along the Watchtower". :scream:

As for Head Six, Head Baltar, etc....I always thought those were nuBSG's version of the Ship of Lights. And the "Cylon God" (doesn't like to be called that ;) ) was nuBSG's version of Count Iblis.
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I hear what you're saying, but for me, this makes it all even more compelling, in line with the "all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again" theme. And the idea that we are them. The original series did this too, maybe with more of an Egyptian slant. If you look in the background of a lot of scenes, there is representation from lots of different cultures in our world. I really latched onto the concept of a...genetic memory (for lack of a better term). That the names we have as common today have these ancient origins. That themes in our music, i.e. Watchtower, all flow through our deep-time history and resurface along that way as new generations tap into them. We're all just variations on an ever present theme.
 
Mr. Laser Beam said:
That being said, I do have a question: "Revelations" was almost the SERIES FINALE, wasn't it? I seem to remember something to that effect. And it would fit the dark, depressing ethos of the series, wouldn't it? All they went through to find Earth, and it's a radioactive wasteland? And that's the END?
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It felt that way because there was such a long gap between airings.
 
Mr. Laser Beam said:
There was a writers strike back then, wasn't there? So "Revelations" almost WAS the series finale, had the strike persisted?
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Maybe. As I recall, all the stuff on the planet from the following episode was shot at the same time as the ending of that episode, they they would've had at least half an episode left of raw footage if the show had been canceled because of the strike. Maybe it would've been integrated into a wrap-up TV movie/miniseries, like what happened to Farscape and SG-1.
 
I'm fairly ambivalent about the show overall.

I really enjoyed it when it came out, right from the pilot mini. Yeah it got a little weak in the middle, but it ended fairly strong. It may have helped that I only have a vague affection for the original having seen the pilot movie on TV on repeat sometime in the late 80's (honestly, I associate the classic Cylons more with the A-Team than the actual show.) I know a lot of classic fans were less than impressed with the reimagining, but I really dug it.
I even kept up with the movies & spin-offs ('The Plan' sucked) and was disappointed that 'Caprica' was cut short (though it kinda deserved the cancellation for having such a ponderous, aimless start.)

All that said, I have since attempted a re-watch on at least two separate occasions, and both times I flamed out somewhere in season 3 or 4. I just found it increasingly hard to stay engaged when so much of it is navel gazing and narrative dead-ends, especially knowing in retrospect that a lot of the mystery box nonsense is all talk and no substance.
I'm all for writers being free to change and adjust on the fly, but if you want world building to stand up in the long run, you kinda need to do the work upfront and actually know what the core of the story is, and what the answers to any underlying mysteries really are. That's literally the foundation on which everything else gets built, and if it's not done well, then nothing else is on solid ground. It affects the characters too, and sure enough a bunch of them started acting very screwy and at odds with who they were, mostly because of the demands of the plot over organic characterization.

I ran into a similar problem with 'Lost' (to an even greater extent) and largely for the same reason. It's the "keep dropping some cool and mysterious element because it's cool and mysterious, but don't actually bother to think it through" school of storytelling that really drives me batty. (See Also: JJ's Star Wars two movies.)
If you build your show around a mystery, you have to play fair with the audience. You can't just blurt out "the butler did it in the study with the candlestick" if there was no butler in the first two acts, the candlestick wasn't even in the study, and you've been hinting the whole time that the Gardener knows something but never follow up on it.

So on the whole; a fun ride the first time. Second time; not so much. I know there's plenty of people that still love it to death (and more power to you) and still quite a few that still won't shut up about how the original is so much better (it's not, and get over it already.) Personally; I don't hate it, just can't drum up the interest past a certain point.
 
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Mr. Laser Beam said:
That being said, I do have a question: "Revelations" was almost the SERIES FINALE, wasn't it?
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Sort of. They had filmed the next two or three episodes after Revelations before production was shut down due to the writer's strike and due to how the contracts for certain actors were worded, if the strike went on too long, they'd be unable to get those actors back. So, if the strike did indeed last that long, the plan was to just treat Revelations as the series finale and move on. Fortunately, the strike was resolved before such drastic action was taken.
Mr. Laser Beam said:
I think my main problem with nuBSG was that these people were simply too much like US. I mean, it's an alien civilization, but they still have names like William, Lee, Sharon, Billy, etc.? And their civilization is a carbon copy of our own?
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That was the whole point. Ron Moore was raging against the sci-fi trope of "reinventing the door knob" and wanted to prove you can still have an engaging show in a sci-fi setting while using familiar elements. And it was his belief that using familiar elements would help the show strike a chord among the crowd who aren't typically into sci-fi. Which is why everyone names that are used on Earth instead of completely fictional names, why President Roslin had cancer instead of some weird sounding terminal illness and why their society mirrors American society to the degree it does.
 
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